In passing | Evelyn Broderick

In passing | Evelyn Broderick16th – 26th Aug | A4 Sounds Gallery

In passing

‘the head and the hand are not simply separated intellectually but socially’

Richard Sennet writes about craftsmanship and all kinds of makers. In his book The Craftsman, he uses the phrase ‘making is thinking’. Charmed by the idea of ‘making’, Evelyn Broderick uses socially engaged structures to shackle and bind drawing, printmaking, and sculpture together, to delve into the experiences of using your head, hand and body.

Evelyn’s work explores this social need and desire to make using our hands, and how, now more than ever, it is imperative to our understanding of our surroundings and ourselves. The daily use of electronic devices has slowly disconnected our touch to raw materials and the concept of making has become more of a fitting hobby than an everyday practical need. Society has always had a strong focus on work life but the demands in labour have changed, once physically exhausting, now emotionally draining. Evelyn worries about the attitudes of our limitless abilities that we seem to have created. It is now that we need to reconnect with the touch of making as a way to fully connect to a present and more fulfilled society.

In passing is a new series of work about making. A gentle nod to the game chess, Evelyn uses the pawn as a recurring motif where here it is dismantled into three structures. The title stems from a strange move in chess ‘en passant’, a special pawn capture. She uses materials both man made and natural to highlight the maker, rushes used to make useful objects and copper used in trade. The woodblock prints acknowledge the tactile experience of making a mark.